The American dream has always been global. In 1931, when the historian James Truslow Adams first introduced the concept, he credited
the dream with having “lured tens of millions of all nations to our
shores.” Yet in recent years, a troubling gap has developed between this
original dream and a new one that speaks far less eloquently to the
rest of the world.
The original dream has three strands. The first
is about prosperity: the classic saga of penniless strivers working
hard to lift their families into the middle class. An integral part of
this saga is continuity between generations—with parents sacrificing so
their children can succeed, and successful children never forgetting
“where they came from.” Needless to say, this dream of hard work and
intergenerational mobility is shared by the 95 percent of humanity who
are not American. But it is called the American dream because the United
States was the first nation in history where it actually came true for
large numbers of people.

The
United States is also the nation where the deliberate exclusion of any
individual or group from the dream came to be condemned. This points to
the second and third strands: democracy and freedom. For the dream to
function properly, the basic rights of individuals must be respected. On
this point Adams is clear: “It is not a dream of motor cars and high
wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each
woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are
innately capable.”

It’s important to note that Adams was writing during the
Great Depression, and that these inspiring passages are accompanied by a
long list of economic and social ills, and recommendations for reform.
At the same time, he warned, the greatest danger was that Americans
would not make the necessary effort to save the dream, because “too many
of us … have grown weary and mistrustful of it.”
A recent poll commissioned by The Atlantic
found that, while Americans are feeling quite optimistic about their
own lives, that optimism does not extend to the American dream. Indeed,
the poll found that a large majority is losing faith in it. This, too,
is dangerous, because if these Americans now feel weary and mistrustful
of the dream, they will not make the necessary effort to share it with
others.
During the Cold War, the U.S. government invested
substantial resources in “public diplomacy,” a term that covered a host
of overseas activities—from libraries to lecture tours, art exhibits to
world’s-fair-style expositions, international visitor programs to radio
and TV broadcasts meant to undermine Soviet censorship. As conducted by
the United States Information Agency (USIA) and the State Department’s
Division of Cultural Relations, these activities sought to convey what
President Harry Truman called
“a full and fair picture” of American history, culture, society, and
political institutions—including the American dream as experienced by
generations of immigrants.Today,
this form of diplomacy is sometimes dismissed as propaganda. But that
is unfair. Having witnessed the extreme propaganda emanating from Nazi
Germany and the Soviet Union, the men and women who crafted America’s
Cold War public diplomacy generally knew the difference between outright
lies and truthful attempts at persuasion.
But then, amid the
triumphalism that followed the end of the Cold War, public diplomacy was
judged obsolete. Between 1993 and 2001, funding for the U.S.
government’s cultural and educational exchange programs was cut by more
than a third, from $349 million to $232 million (adjusted for
inflation). Overseas, this meant the closing of libraries and cultural
centers that had long served as meeting places and free-speech zones. In
1999, the USIA was dismantled and its activities scattered throughout
the State Department.After
the Cold War, authoritarian leaders began separating the American
dream’s strand of prosperity, which they wanted, from the strands of
democracy and freedom, which they did not.With hindsight
these cuts seem unwise because, contrary to certain predictions made in
the 1990s, the whole world did not rush to embrace the American dream.
Indeed, during this same period, a new breed of authoritarian
leaders—exemplified by Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore, Deng Xiaoping in
China, and (later) Vladimir Putin in Russia—were busy separating the
strand of prosperity, which they wanted, from the strands of democracy
and freedom, which they most assuredly did not want. Today, almost all
of these regimes are increasingly corrupt and repressive. But at the
turn of the 21st century, the new authoritarian model was looking pretty
good.
Then came the 9/11 attacks and America’s disastrous, costly
attempts to impose democracy by force on Afghanistan and Iraq. These
military efforts were accompanied by numerousstudiescalling for
a new public diplomacy fitted to the challenges of the new century. But
these calls have not been satisfactorily answered. So far, the U.S.
government’s main innovation has been to deploy social media—something
America’s enemies do just as well, or better, than the U.S. government.
This in a world flooded with sophisticated Chinese, Russian, and violent
jihadist propaganda, where it is more important than ever to reaffirm
all three strands of the American dream.

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How China's President Defines the 'Chinese Dream'Here we encounter a challenge rarely acknowledged in the
debate over public diplomacy. The post-Cold War spending cuts left a
vacuum, which was quickly filled by America’s most successful export:
commercial entertainment. Everywhere in the world, people view the
United States through some kind of screen, whether a big one in a movie
theater or a small one in a television or computer. And what appears on
those screens has the power to shape foreign opinion of the American
dream and what it stands for.
This does not bother most Americans
because, after all, jazz, rock and roll, and Hollywood films played a
positive role in the Cold War “battle for hearts and minds.” Plus, the
export of popular culture imposes no burden on the taxpayer—indeed, it
makes a hefty profit. Ever since World War I, when President Woodrow
Wilson described
film as “a universal language [that] lends itself importantly to the
presentation of America’s plans and purposes,” the export of popular
culture has been considered both good business and good public
diplomacy.But is that still true? Between 1989 and 2010, foreign sales of U.S. films and TV shows increased
fourfold, from $3.6 billion to $14.2 billion. So business is still
good. But if the chief goal of public diplomacy is to project all three
strands of the American dream, then this export is not succeeding.
That’s
because, instead of showing the interdependence of prosperity,
democracy, and freedom, contemporary popular culture tends to single out
freedom and portray it in ways that are very entertaining, but often
also very alien to the concerns of most people in the world.This
new dream features a fantasy of young, unattached men and women
enjoying a degree of affluence and personal freedom that is unheard of
in most societies.After 9/11, for example, many studies were
done of America’s tarnished image, and one, headed by former U.S.
Ambassador Edward Djerejian, quoted an English teacher in Syria asking, “Does Friends show a typical American family?” The question was odd, given that Friends, which ran on NBC from 1994 to 2004, was notable for not showing a family. This did not prevent Friends from attracting a huge global audience, though. According to its producers at Warner Brothers, Friends
has been telecast in 135 countries, reaching an average of 14 million
viewers per telecast. And these figures are only for the more lucrative
markets. When I pressed the producers for the total number of “gross
views” (one-off exposures to a single episode), they came up with the
astonishing figure of 17 billion!
That figure was doubtless a
joke, tossed out to a pesky researcher. But as I discovered in talking
with over 200 producers, consumers, and observers of popular culture in
17 countries around the world, the TV genre represented by Friends and its many successors, from Sex and the City to The Big Bang Theory, has been tremendously influential in projecting a new American dream—one that, unlike its predecessor, requires no connection with either political freedom or democracy.In
this new dream, the saga of one generation working hard to raise the
prospects of the next is replaced by a fantasy of young, unattached men
and women living in an upscale urban setting with little or no contact
with their families or communities of origin, and enjoying a degree of
affluence and personal freedom, including sexual freedom, that is
unheard of in most societies. As described by the creators of Friends, it
is about “sex, love, relationships, careers … [at] a time in your life
when everything’s possible … because when you’re single and in the city,
your friends are your family.”The set of the Central Perk coffee shop in Friends, in SoHo, New York (Brendan McDermid / Reuters)Consider, for example, the stunning absence of parents, siblings, or other relatives from Sex and the City, a program that was legally broadcast
in 33 countries, including Turkey, India, Indonesia, and China, and
illegally pirated in many others. In the series, the four female
characters’ estrangement from their families is virtually total. As the
lawyer Miranda says, “My family lives in Philadelphia and I don’t like
them.” Through 94 episodes, two feature films, and a couple of weddings,
the main character, a newspaper columnist named Carrie, is depicted as
having no family at all.
This picture can be alluring, if you’re
an unmarried Egyptian or Nigerian or Indian living with your extended
family and subject to their many demands. But there is also a downside
to the picture, when viewed from the perspective of people enmeshed in
extended, multigenerational family relationships. In Cairo I met a young
woman, a student from a Bedouin village, who told me that she was
nervous about her impending first visit to the United States because, as
she put it, “In the media, Americans are always alone.”
This summer I was in Nigeria, meeting with Hausa-speaking
journalists, when over lunch the subject of movies came up. One young
man, recently returned from covering the ravages of the Islamist
militant group Boko Haram in the country’s northeast, said that he and
his wife disliked Hollywood movies because they were “too immoral.” Most
Nigerians, Christians as well as Muslims, prefer Bollywood films, he
told me, because they are about topics tradition-minded people can
relate to, such as generational conflict over arranged marriage.
That
young Nigerian was not a religious radical, and neither were most of
the people I met overseas. Indeed, many were ardent fans of American
popular culture. But even the most ardent fans take a somewhat dim view
of the values that culture portrays. In the United Arab Emirates, I
spoke with an engineering student who told me that his personal goal was
to help his family, not to follow the American way and “seek only the
pleasure of the moment.” In India, I heard praise for all things
American, accompanied by polite dismissal of the hyper-individualistic
lifestyle depicted in its entertainment.“Does Friends show a typical American family?” the Syrian English teacher asked.These
subtle criticisms of American pop culture should not be confused with a
reactionary attachment to the traditional family. In my travels I have
heard similar comments from feminists seeking greater rights and
opportunities for women. And it should be stated that these media
portrayals are not entirely inaccurate: Americans are marrying later and less often today than in the past, and similar trends are occurring in many other countries.
But
perceptions matter, because these cultural exports are now the main
lens through which billions of people judge America’s intentions and
ideals. What bothers people in many non-Western societies is not some
feminist or socially liberal message embedded in American popular
culture, but its sheer callowness. Why, they ask, are Americans so
obsessed with the stage of life between adolescence and maturity? Why do
so many American movies and TV shows focus on characters who seem
neurotically afraid of commitment and responsibility?The
original American dream appealed to adult men and women willing to
commit themselves to a risky path of hard work, sacrifice, and hope for a
better future. The new dream panders to adolescents and
post-adolescents who are fearful of growing up. This is not an accurate
or full picture of American life, and neither is it appealing to many
people whom America needs on its side. To say this is not to recommend
censorship—there is already far too much of that in the world. But it is
to recommend some self-reflection, and maybe restraint, on the part of
the producers and consumers of American entertainment, which, like it or
not, is now this nation’s de facto ambassador to a turbulent and
skeptical world.